It appears that a large meteor, estimated to have weighed in at a hefty 50 tonnes streaked across the sky in Russia earlier today (15th February), glowing brighter and brighter as it heated up at high altitude. It then exploded, breaking up into smaller pieces which impacted over a large area of the Ural Mountains, injuring nearly 1,000 people.

According to Russia Today: “Army units found three meteorite debris impact sites, two of which are in an area near Chebarkul Lake, west of Chelyabinsk. The third site was found some 80 kilometers further to the northwest, near the town of Zlatoust. One of the fragments that struck near Chebarkul left a crater six meters in diameter.”

At least two towns in the area have declared a state of emergency, and President Putin has promised immediate aid.

I believe, that at any level, there is no such thing as chaos, because the laws of physics would be broken.

It doesn’t matter about what level we are speaking, be it microscopic or astronomical, the laws of physics are the laws of physics. Therefore, there is no chaos. If, for example, a rubber ball is dropped inside a metal sphere, and we are unable to predict how it bounces, we call it chaos. If we are unable to predict how people may react in a given circumstance, we call it chaos. I say there is no such thing.

Our inability to predict how something will react is just that. In other words, we simply do not know enough about the objects in question. We simply do not know everything about the composition of the rubber ball, nor the metal sphere in which it bounces. The matter becomes crystal clear when we talk about people. We can never know what they will do in a given circumstance, we can only estimate average reactions. But still we do not have chaos, just the lack of data. I would appreciate feedback about this 🙂

Yes – so what is the problem?

The problem lies with the definition of time. On a day-to-day level, I believe that time is functionally constant and reliable. We can create mechanical and electronic devices to divide time into useful tiny pieces, small enough to measure the minute triangulation differences needed for GPS, large enough to let us know when it’s time to take a tea break. This is time as we need it, to control processes, to know what day it is and to be absolutely sure when an astronomical event will occur, or when Santa will come … read more: